Advice for the newspaper industry

From a reader at 69.124.17.203 on August 31, 2008 at 9:05 PM

FWIW, that is marked as commentary. Would be better if the piece allowed comments so the fans of the strip (myself included) could respond.

Check with any newspaper editors who have ever changed the comics page and you'll find they received some of their most spirited responses from readers, pro and con.

Also feel that I should say something about criticism and its place in general interest publications, but don't know exactly what. Maybe a more in depth post on this topic would take that on.

MattFriedrichs (http://sportsnation.espn.go.com/fans/MattFriedrichs)

From Robert Niles on September 1, 2008 at 8:24 PM

We've talked a bit about criticism earlier on the site, but I just wanted to make a quick point here about story selection.

Why write a story that says a recurring feature appearing in the paper is crap? If it is, then spike the feature. But publishers need to be making the case that everything in their publications is great stuff, worthy of the public's time. And if it isn't, well, we need to tell the public how we will do better next time.

Slamming our own stuff, without redress, doesn't do that. It just helps convince the public to stop reading us. We publishers can't afford for many more people to decide that.